Macropost 2: A Right to Health Care
Have you ever avoided going to the doctor because you were afraid of the cost? Did you do that while you were covered by health insurance? Now imagine, you are working in crop fields all day, pulling sweet potatoes and tobacco under the hot sun for 10 every day. There’s no water break, there’s no bathroom break, just you and your crew in the field for hours on end with no relief. The normal days worry is of heat exhaustion, or dehydration, but suddenly, your skin starts to burn. All over your arms and your torso- where you’ve been holding crops against your skin. It burns but you can’t stop working, or even tell anyone for fear you will lose your job. Your family relies on your below minimum federal wages to make ends meet at home. So you just ignore it, you finish out your day in agony, and show your crew when you get back to the camp hours later. It’s obvious something is wrong, the skin has wilted and is still searing, but if you tell the farmer, your boss, you wont be able to work, and you may not be invited back to work next year. The North Carolina Farm Worker Project (NCFWP) provides free health care to farmworkers, no matter what kind of status they hold in this country. Whether it be H2A, DACA recipient, permanent resident or undocumented immigrant. They care about our farmworkers, and they advocate for their rights. Every Monday of the season, the NCFWP partners with Campbell University School of Medicine (CUSOM) and comes to alternating camps to provide health care to whoever needs it. The above situation while extreme, is not uncommon. However, the mobile clinic doesn’t require you to be in a state of emergency to get care. Do you need your blood pressure checked? A refill on your medication? Just a general physical because you can’t remember the last one you had? NCFWP has you covered, and they are only a phone call away to make an appointment. Additionally, if the clinic is not at YOUR camp this week, transport can be arranged for you to be brought there and returned home. Aside from that, if you need labs done, if you are prescribed antibiotics for that wicked ingrown toe nail you called about, they will get them for you and they will deliver them to you the next day.
In modern America, it’s difficult with a normal 9-5 job to get to a doctor’s appointment without missing work. Often, we face struggles of appointments a month out from when we called. Consider the cost of this appointment if you live in rural North Carolina, over an hour from a primary care physician, with no insurance, and little if any English proficiency to explain your situation and advocate for yourself. What is the true cost of this doctor’s appointment? If you have to miss work, find transportation hours away ( you don’t own a car in this country), risk your days wages, potentially your family’s livelihood, and your opportunity to be employed the following year for fear of deportation, all to possibly to not even be able to afford the cost of the treatment or medication you require to continue working if you overcome all those other barriers.
Every Monday, members of our team have been out at the mobile clinic helping NCFWP and CUSOM check patients in, get vitals, provide health education, and genuinely show that there are people here who care about the work these people are doing. Recently, our health education has been in the form of COVID-19 education games, and blood pressure monitoring videos and questions. Every Tuesday, we go to outreach and assist in transporting medication that was prescribed the day before, we help our beloved outreach worker ferry people to and from the Campbell University clinic to get whatever they might not have been able to receive the day before; an ear exam, blood work. Before the night is done, the outreach worker figures out what camp the clinic will be hosted at the following week, and we go there and make appointments, register people, and find out what needs aren’t being met.
As a future health care provider, and a current public health student, I vow to never turn a blind eye to our farmworker community again. I vow to volunteer my time as a provider to help a vulnerable and essential population get the care they need, meet their basic rights, and not have to be concerned about the migraines they’ve been having on top of all the other struggles they face in the field daily. You may not be able to do those things, as we all have our own passions and calls to help, but you can be an advocate. You can be kind and humble. You can say hello in the doctor’s office or grocery store. You can say thank you. You can be welcoming to this community who does so much for us and gets so little in return. We are all humans looking for the same things in this life, asking for the same respect and deserving of the same rights, especially the right to be healthy and live a full life.
